Chinese Public Theology: Generational Shifts and Confucian Imagination in Chinese Christianity

It has been widely recognized that Christianity is the fastest growing religion in one of the last communist-run countries of the world: the People's Republic of China. Yet it would be a mistake to describe Chinese Christianity as merely a clandestine faith or, as hoped by the Communist Party of China, a privatized religion. Alexander Chow argues that Christians in mainland China have been constructing a more intentional public theology to engage the Chinese state and society, since the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Chinese Public Theology recalls the events which have led to this transformation and examines the developments of Christianity across three generations of Chinese intellectuals from the state-sanctioned Protestant church, the secular academy, and the growing urban renaissance in Calvinism. Moreover, Chow shows how each of these generations have provided different theological responses to the same sociopolitical moments of the last three decades. This study illustrates how a growing understanding of Chinese public theology has been developed through a subconscious intermingling of Christian and Confucian understandings of public intellectualism. These factors result in a contextually-unique understanding of public theology, but also one which is faced by contextual limitations as well. With this in mind, Chow draws from the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of theosis and the Chinese traditional teaching of the unity of Heaven and humanity (Tian ren heyi) to offer a way forward in the construction of a Chinese public theology.

About the Author :
Alexander Chow is Lecturer in Theology and World Christianity at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of Theosis, Sino-Christian Theology and the Second Chinese Enlightenment (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and an editor of the academic journal Studies in World Christianity (Edinburgh University Press).

Review :
"Chow's pioneering work is a well-received contribution, serving as an important model that can stimulate much-needed future research on this topic. Chow raises crucial questions about the intellectual viability of the Christian theistic framework within China, as well as how relations between God and humanity can serve as a reasonable starting point for synthesizing Chinese and Christian modes of thought. This work facilitates constructive discussions with mainstream ideas on the future of China's political model."--Joshua Dao Wei Sim, Reading Religion "The author succeeds in displaying the 'fluidity' of the landscape of Christian public engagement, and his ingenious use of a sociological generational approach serves a starting point for locating the players of Chinese public theology."--Mary Li Ma, ChinaSource "This is one of the most important and original works on theology and public discourse we are likely to see for a while, because it addresses, with a wealth of particular specialist knowledge, the diversity of Christian and Christian-related discourses in modern China as they address public issues and social vision. The final overview, arguing that Chinese Christianity needs some of the insights of Eastern as well as Western Christian doctrine, is a challenging but constructive contribution to the future of what may yet be the world's largest Christian community before long."--Rowan Williams, Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge "A thought-provoking study of the political thinking of new generations of Christian leaders, including from the 'house churches'. The book brings research in Chinese Christianity to a new theoretical level."--Edmond Tang, Former director of Research Unit in Asian Christianity University of Birmingham